Comparison of CoCreate LISP and AutoLISP

[DrRDCharbonneauAphD]

It sounds like you just might be a good person to watch around here and ask questions about LISP. How similar to AutoLISP is it for CoCreate?

[Wolfgang]

Hi, please be aware that you have asked a question in a TEST forum!

Let me first answer with a comparison:

It's like driving a car. Most of us are able to drive a car. And once you have learned how to do, you can do it the rest of your life. That's (standard) LISP.

But AutoLisp and 'CoCreate' LISP is than like driving a BUS and driving a 40tons TRUCK. Of course you know the all traffic signs. They are all the same in the scenarios. Once you have learned (in addition to car driving) how to turn to the left driving a bus, you might imagine how to do that with the truck.. But it's still different. You need more training and more experience.


And driving big long truck in tiny village is another story. ;-)



Back to LISP:
Common LISP is the base. That's the same. So how to:
* define a variable
* define a function
* define a macro
* write a loop (while / until / dolist)
* building strings,
* adding numbers .. ...
that's the same

but:
* getting interactive, asking information from the user
* building UserInterface
* creating new objects
* modifying existing objects
here AutoLisp and CoCreate LISP are quite different.


Even the code to change the color of a line is already very different.

---------------
remark:
I used CoCreate LISP as short description for common LISP + the extensions available made by CoCreate, which are named INTEGRATION KIT.

[clausb]

Actually, AutoLISP is not based on Common Lisp, and therefore is much more limited in expressiveness as a language. For example, AutoLISP doesn't have macros, arrays, let bindings et cetera (at least as far as I know, please correct me where needed).

On top of that, there are, of course, the differences in CAD-specific functionality or CAD libraries accessible through each dialect.